Well, he was also the first to approach the character without prejudice. Even the best filmmaker in the world is going to be terribly limited if he goes into a project having thought for his whole life that the source material is worthless.

_________________The temptation is to like what you should like--not what you do like... another temptation is to come up with an interesting reason for liking it that may not actually be the reason you like it.

Sun Mar 31, 2013 12:22 pm

Thief12

Assistant Director

Joined: Sat Dec 15, 2012 9:35 pmPosts: 822Location: Puerto Rico

Re: Last Movie You Watched

Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb Finally watched this last night. My initial feeling is it's far from my favorite Kubrick films, but still it was a consistently funny and interesting film. Reminded me a bit of Airplane! in how most of the actors were playing their roles straight-faced. On that vein, Peter Sellers was impressive in his three roles (didn't even realize he was playing the President until after the film), although his Dr. Strangelove might've been a bit too slapsticky when compared to the other performances. Still, I couldn't help but LOL when he yelled "Mein Fuhrer!" for the first time. But my favorite performance was easily George C. Scott. He was hilarious all around. Funny how Kubrick tricked him into his performance. If anything, the bits at the plane were the least effective, but still, a pretty good film. Grade: A- although I've had it in my mind since, which usually means its stakes might rise with time.

The plot? Minimal. What this is is a fine showcase for some of the best acting talent on the American screen. Alec Baldwin absolutely owns the brief screen time he gets, while Al Pacino and Jack Lemmon trade barbs like the masters of the craft that they are. Kevin Spacey and Alan Arkin's performances are a bit more understated, but equally great. And Ed Harris burns with anger; he's practically explosive. An amazing film all around with great writing by David Mamet. Glengarry was not a box office smash at first, but this film gradually found its well-deserved audience.

_________________Death is pretty finalI'm collecting vinylI'm gonna DJ at the end of the world.

Sun Mar 31, 2013 8:40 pm

JackBurns

Second Unit Director

Joined: Sat Sep 15, 2012 10:51 pmPosts: 345Location: Durham, NC

Re: Last Movie You Watched

Room 237 (2012) 3/4

There’s nothing better than getting into deep discussion about a film with friends—trying to piece together its meanings and symbolisms can be extremely rewarding—but sometimes someone suggests a notion that’s kind of “out there in left field.”

Room 237 is like a giant get together of these people: conspiracy theorists, over analyzers, and hardcore fanatics. Hearing these guys explain their theories of The Shinning to the audience is always fun, and in many ways its cinephilia at its best. However these individuals are so excited to share their opinions with you that sometimes they forget to actually connect the significance of their views to The Shinning as a whole. Overall, these discussions can come across as a little wacky, and sometimes a little hard to follow. You see, Room 237 never lets you see the faces of its theorists, only showing footage from The Shinning along with other Kubrick films to fashion a sort of narrative perspective. This style leaves a faint feeling of exhaustion by the end of the film—a tiredness that could have probably been remedied with just the simple input of talking heads.

The Imposter (2012) 3.5/4

A brilliant concentration on manipulation and deception, with beautifully done reenactments that remind the viewer of their power in storytelling, much like they did in The Thin Blue Line.

Spring Breakers (2013) 2/4

The first act, along with the beginning of the second act feel like a Girls Gone Wild video, created by a director who has a message to send out to his audience: Our society strives for pleasure—but do we really need that all of those female body parts being constantly shoved in our faces to put that message across? I don’t think so. The start up of the second act becomes more interesting, but these characters and their fall from “college girl grace” are very unbelievable. I can’t believe that I’m going to say this but James Franco actually adds a spark to this film that was lacking before the second act, yet this soon fades away when Franco eventually becomes a lifeless bowl of jelly that can only say, “look at my shit”. With a very weak narrative and subpar acting, Spring Breakers dips down below mediocrity, with it’s only strong suits being a score and tone that are successfully indicative of the 90’s. If you want to go to the mat for this film then by all means do, but please think about the phone conversation Selena Gomez has with her grandmother before hand.

Dear Zachary: A Letter to a Son About His Father (2008) 3.5/4

This film had me mesmerized. A film has never evoked such emotion out of me before. I laughed, I cried, and I grew angry. I can’t say this is an achievement in well-polished filmmaking, but I can say that it captures (captures being very important here) a story like no other.

_________________"I have now come to claim that satisfaction."

Mon Apr 01, 2013 12:43 am

Ken

Director

Joined: Sun Oct 07, 2012 6:26 pmPosts: 1728

Re: Last Movie You Watched

JackBurns wrote:

Hearing these guys explain their theories of The Shinning to the audience is always fun, and in many ways its cinephilia at its best. However these individuals are so excited to share their opinions with you that sometimes they forget to actually connect the significance of their views to The Shinning as a whole. Overall, these discussions can come across as a little wacky, and sometimes a little hard to follow. You see, Room 237 never lets you see the faces of its theorists, only showing footage from The Shinning along with other Kubrick films to fashion a sort of narrative perspective. This style leaves a faint feeling of exhaustion by the end of the film—a tiredness that could have probably been remedied with just the simple input of talking heads.

_________________The temptation is to like what you should like--not what you do like... another temptation is to come up with an interesting reason for liking it that may not actually be the reason you like it.

Mon Apr 01, 2013 12:57 am

Awf Hand

Second Unit Director

Joined: Tue Oct 09, 2012 10:26 amPosts: 260

Re: Last Movie You Watched

Watched End of Watch last night and read James' review of it this morning. Two hours well spent indeed. This movie yo-yo's it's way between gripping, high-intensity and humor/relaxation effectively through the running length. I didn't find myself bothered as much by the shaky cam, as I'd watched it on a smaller screen. If you can watch this movie and keep a steady heart-rate, you must be on some pretty strong meds.

_______________________________________________My milkshake bringeth all thee gentlefolk to mine yard. Verily, 'tis better than thine. I would instruct thee, but I must levy a fee.

Mon Apr 01, 2013 12:29 pm

Thief12

Assistant Director

Joined: Sat Dec 15, 2012 9:35 pmPosts: 822Location: Puerto Rico

Re: Last Movie You Watched

Awf Hand wrote:

Watched End of Watch last night and read James' review of it this morning. Two hours well spent indeed. This movie yo-yo's it's way between gripping, high-intensity and humor/relaxation effectively through the running length. I didn't find myself bothered as much by the shaky cam, as I'd watched it on a smaller screen. If you can watch this movie and keep a steady heart-rate, you must be on some pretty strong meds.

I more or less agree. It was a good watch (no pun intended), although not great. Suffers from a bit of predictability, and the handheld/shaky cam approach was a bit distracting at first. But still, it worked better than in, say, Chronicle. But the film's strength was the chemistry between Peña and Gyllenhaal.

The fourth of five collaborations between John Wayne and Maureen O-Hara finds The Duke playing George Washington (GW) McClintock, a cattle baron who has workied his way from nothing to become the richest man in the town named after him in the Oklahoma territory around the turn of the century. The success has not changed GW from the man he always was; he still puts on the cowboy hat and rustles up the herd and is plain spoken with an unwavering moral compass. His estranged wife Katherine (O'Hara), on the other hand, is trying to put her humble roots behind her and left GW 2 years earlier over a perceived infidelity and has been living with the folks of higher society in the territory's capitol city. Their lives cross again when their daughter (a young Stephanie Powers) returns from college out east and the parents need to decide with whom she will be living.

Part Western, part Taming of the Shrew, this film also has some sub-plots involving relations with the Indians in the territory on the brink of statehood, a love triangle between GW's daughter, one of GW's hired hands (Patrick Wayne) and another college graduate from back east (Jerry Van Dyke), and the conflict between Catherine and GW's new cook played by Yvonne De Carlo.

For the most part the movie is enjoyable in the moment, but it has some rather contradictory things to say about the Indians, showcasing both bigotry against them in a negative light while at the same time playing into Hollywood stereotypes. There is a whimsy in the production that does get a bit distracting at times. The highlight of the movie is seeing the chemistry between Wayne and O'Hara. At the end of the day I felt there were too many sub-plots running around that were either left dangling or otherwise went nowhere as the movie doesn't really "end", but just sort of "stops abruptly." 2.5 / 4.0

Mon Apr 01, 2013 3:40 pm

Blonde Almond

Cinematographer

Joined: Sun Oct 07, 2012 2:41 pmPosts: 504Location: The Desert

Re: Last Movie You Watched

The Trouble With Harry - Made in between the perhaps more conventional Hitchcock works To Catch A Thief and The Man Who Knew Too Much is this very nonconventional entry into the Master of Suspense's filmography. Apart from the director's penchant for sly dark humor, the film breaks with most of the common elements you normally associate with his films. The plot revolves around a murder, but there's never really a sense of urgency as to who killed him or why. The comedic elements are heightened and there are no prolonged stretches of tension (much of the humor revolves around the constant changes of heart from everyone over what to do with the body, and so the title character ends up getting buried, dug up, and reburied several times over the course of the film). The usual blonde heroine is nowhere to be found, replaced by red-headed Shirley MacLaine (in her first film). Her upbeat persona fits right in with the tone the film is going for, and her indifferent reaction to the body is one of the film's highlights.

The setting is a small, peaceful town in autumn, which creates a pastoral atmosphere that stands apart from Hitchcock's more urban-oriented narratives, and one that contributes to the film's low-key charm. Bernard Herrmann's score also is a perfect complement, and it's nice to hear a more playful score compared to the ones heard in Hitchcock's other, more serious, films. The film's laidback nature makes it seem like more of a trifle than anything that could be measured up to the great Hitchcock works, but its lightness is a big part of its charm. There's a kind of tossed-off feel to the whole thing, as if Hitchcock just felt like having fun and trying something different for one film before getting back to serious business. Yet, most directors wish they could craft something as delightful and easygoing as this and make it seem so completely effortless. 7/10.

I'm A Cyborg, But That's Ok - Just as The Trouble With Harry was an atypical work from Alfred Hitchcock, this 2006 film from Park Chan-wook, best known for his Vengeance trilogy, stands apart from the rest of his work in a large number of ways. The film centers around Cha Young-goon, a young woman who, through various psychological complications from her past, believes herself to be a cyborg. After being checked into a mental hospital, she refuses to eat any of her meals, convinced that it will disrupt the complex machinery that keeps her running. Because of this, she starts to starve, drawing the concern of both the doctors and the patients. Despite the subject matter and the setting, the film has a much lighter tone than the rest of Park's work, which is a nice change of pace for him even though it's clear throughout that he isn't as sure-footed operating with that type of material. The result is a little like One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest, only with more focus on the quirks of the various patients and without the presence of Nurse Ratched to steer the action into darker territory.

Too much of the film revolves around quirky behavior and not much else. Other than a handful of visually arresting sequences where Cha Young-goon imagines using her cyborg powers to gun down the hospital orderlies, fulfilling Park's thirst for bloodshed, the film is meandering and patience-testing. Only in the last half-hour does Park finally hit on the right balance, when another patient (played by Korean pop star Rain) decides to take a more active interest in helping Cha Young-goon sort through her problems. There's an absolutely wonderful scene where he pretends to install an "energy converter" into her back, so she can convert the food she eats into energy. And then right after that scene is another successful moment where all the other inmates watch in anticipation as she tests to see if the "installation" was successful. Still, to get to those moments you have to sift through over an hour of aimless material, and in the end it's not really worth the hassle. 4/10.

The Big Heat - One of the big pleasures of reading through Roger Ebert's Great Movies collection is reading about films I haven't seen yet, and then tracking them down myself. Ebert's great movie review of Fritz Lang's 1953 film The Big Heat is a particularly interesting one, as he focuses on the sinister edges present in a character who at first glance appears to be a straight arrow. After viewing the film, I had to ask myself if my perception of Glenn Ford's central character Detective Dave Bannion was directly influenced by Ebert's writings, or if I would have made the same inferences on my own. After some thought, I have a feeling I would have perceived the same undercurrent. Ford plays a police detective who decides to stand up against a powerful crime syndicate, even if it means endangering himself, his family, and anyone else who crosses his path in the process. He knows that the syndicate is "too big to fail," is in the pockets of just about everybody in town, but that doesn't stop him from naively pursuing his one-man mission and sacrificing lives other than his in the process. Maybe he truly believes there won't be personal repercussions for his actions. Or maybe, and this is more likely, he just figures his mission will inevitably have a few casualties, and he's willing to sacrifice a few lives as long as he gets to keep his own.

Ford is backed up by a couple of strong supporting performances from Gloria Grahame, as a woman caught in the middle of the struggle, and Lee Marvin, as a particularly dangerous henchman. It's not a perfect film; the idea that a crime syndicate would allow a widow to blackmail them with her husband's confession letter locked away in a safe deposit box doesn't seem likely, and the ending doesn't quite ring true either. And even though Ford's character is fascinating, in the end it's Grahame and Marvin who command the attention whenever they're onscreen. Still, it remains a compelling watch, especially when the darkest corners of the narrative reveal themselves and take center stage. 7/10.

_________________"The only true currency in this bankrupt world is what you share with someone else when you're uncool."Letterboxd Profile

Tue Apr 02, 2013 1:26 am

Blonde Almond

Cinematographer

Joined: Sun Oct 07, 2012 2:41 pmPosts: 504Location: The Desert

Re: Last Movie You Watched

The Asphalt Jungle - There is a certain subsection of noir that revolves around the big heist, and this subsection has inspired a long history of both great and not-so-great entries, most of them using the same standard elements. This John Huston film from 1950 functions both as a terrific noir and as a terrific heist picture, and one of the earliest standout examples of the latter. Sterling Hayden leads a cast of gruff character actors as a down-on-his luck lowlife who is offered the opportunity to participate in a big heist. Once the heist is completed, however, tensions rise and people are betrayed, and there is a good chance by the end that most of the characters will either be in prison or dead. If that plot sounds a little overly familiar, it's probably because so many subsequent films have essentially used its basics as the template for their own stories. You can see at least a little of its influence in many of the classic crime films of the '50s and beyond, especially Stanley Kubrick's The Killing (which also starred Hayden), Jules Dassin's Rififi and Jean-Pierre Melville's Bob Le Flambeur and later on Le Cercle Rouge.

Huston's film is a little more rough around the edges, but and it perhaps doesn't reach quite the same heights as those aforementioned films, but it manages to have its own distinctive qualities to separate it positively from the others. In a film mostly dominated by men working with and then backstabbing other men, enough time is made for two women to make an impression. It took me awhile to place where I'd previously seen Jean Hagen, until I realized she was the helium-voiced Lina Lamont in Singin' In The Rain. Her role here is very different from that Oscar-nominated performance. There's also an early role for Marilyn Monroe, who despite being in only a couple of scenes already lights up the screen in that way that only she could really do. Because the general outlines of these kinds of films are usually so similar, the little details start to stand out as more essential, and The Asphalt Jungle has more than enough of those little details to stand on its own. 8/10.

Stoker - First things first, this is undeniably a film by Park Chan-wook, and that alone is worth celebrating, because it could have easily not been the case. I admittedly haven't seen The Last Stand, the Arnold Schwarzenegger comeback vehicle and the English-language debut of South Korean filmmaker Kim Jee-woon, but everything I heard about that film suggested a director-for-hire effort that didn't measure up to the director's usual standards. Despite also moving over into the English language for the first time, Park's style has not been compromised at all; the film is as dark and stylish and unconventional as his most notorious Korean productions. It's also a much more focused effort, which is something that always been somewhat of a problem for me with Park's work; too often there doesn't seem to be much of a reason behind his stylistic flourishes, and they end up serving more as a distraction rather than as a complement to the other elements of the narrative.

With Stoker, Park's stylistic choices, especially shot composition and multi-stranded editing, complement the material more than any other film he has made. One of my favorite moments involves three characters having a conversation despite being in three separate rooms. It's a terrific way of visually expressing their three distinct personalities and how each of them remain distant from each other while occupying the same house. Speaking of the personalities, the three main performances from Mia Wasikowska, Matthew Goode, and Nicole Kidman are all strong. Goode in particular is a standout, bringing back some of the menace he projected in The Lookout. While it isn't that hard to figure out where the film is going right from the get go, it's definitely the kind of film where it's not so much what it's about as how it's about. And after watching the trailers with apprehension and worrying whether or not Park's style would translate over to the English language, it was really encouraging to see him pull it off so well. 8/10.

Room 237 - It's amazing how engaging it is just listening to people talk about film. This documentary, over the course of about 100 minutes, surrenders you to the opinions of a handful of obsessive people, who go into great detail about the hidden meanings in Stanley Kubrick's classic horror film The Shining. The people are never pictured onscreen, with the film relying entirely on voiceovers over film footage. Like Red Letter Media's dissection of the Star Wars prequels, Room 237 offers up an oftentimes comedic film analysis. But while Red Letter Media's work has a good amount of truth alongside all the goofiness, the opinions in this film hardly ever feel close to reality. Only a few points, such as the hidden theme of Native American genocide, are plausible in any way; most of them stretch the bounds of credibility so far you're likely to find them more exasperating than interesting, none more so than when someone starts to talk about Kubrick intentionally superimposing his face into the clouds for a frame in the opening sequence. Another person believes that the film is Kubrick's confession that he faked the Apollo moon landing. And yet another person talks about projecting the film both forward and backward at the same time on the same screen. and we are shown this in action as certain images overlap to create a kind of unintentional symmetry (this section is actually interesting in a meaningless but quite hypnotic kind of way).

Truthfully though, the film is less about the secret layers of The Shining and more about critical theory, and how people from different backgrounds can approach a film and have their interests inform their readings of the film's true meaning. One person who has an interest in the Holocaust will see a reference to Nazism in the type of typewriter Jack uses, while another who has an interest in Native American history will see a can of baking soda with a Native American logo in the background and conclude the film is about coming to terms with the mass killing of Native Americans. Maybe it speaks to the enduring power of Kubrick's work that people can still obsess over its hidden meanings so many years later, but this kind of obsession isn't exclusive to this one film in particular. Thought-provoking analysis is one of the real joys that comes along with watching films, and this documentary is a nice representation of that joy. 7/10.

_________________"The only true currency in this bankrupt world is what you share with someone else when you're uncool."Letterboxd Profile

The early scenes are made to look and sound like a documentary of some kind, but none of it is remotely believable. Tatum plays the same working-class boy trying to make good as he does in Step Up, and this thing is about as believable, despite Soderbergh’s early efforts at giving it a kind of grim credibility.

Tatum has no chemistry with either of his romantic interests. The plight of the performers isn’t explored in any depth despite looking like it might give us a similar kind of dissection to the one Mickey Rouke got in The Wrestler. The dialogue is either clunky or laughable. The first half-hour felt like an entire evening. The only “good” character in it was Matthew McConaughey’s, and that was only because he was so grotesque you couldn’t take your eyes off him. He kind of reminded me of a wiling version of Charlize Theron’s Alileen Wornos. Despite Tatum’ early ass shot, even my Wife tired at this outing.

The plot? Minimal. What this is is a fine showcase for some of the best acting talent on the American screen. Alec Baldwin absolutely owns the brief screen time he gets, while Al Pacino and Jack Lemmon trade barbs like the masters of the craft that they are. Kevin Spacey and Alan Arkin's performances are a bit more understated, but equally great. And Ed Harris burns with anger; he's practically explosive. An amazing film all around with great writing by David Mamet. Glengarry was not a box office smash at first, but this film gradually found its well-deserved audience.

I thought Jack Lemmon was amazing in that film. I've barely seen anyone who makes he physically cringe like he.

Even more unpopular opinion: none of those movies are good. The first one gets a pass from a lot of people most likely due to rose-tinted glasses. Prior to the Nolan movies, the notion that Batman is more than just a B-list adventure character seemed to be anathema to Hollywood. Even if this negligent attitude doesn't show in the budgets or the marketing campaigns, it shows in the one-dimensional characterization and the childish story logic.

That said, of the three*, the first has a few merciful moments of stylistic unity that raise it a smidgen above the gloomy second film and the overstimulated third. By stylistic unity, I mean that the way it's made turns it into more than what it generally is, at least in those moments. It gains the ability to make people feel things.

I don't think it's that unpopular a view TBH. The first is a hugely flawed piece of work with a couple of redeeming features. Sometimes I find it watchable, others I find it almost unwatchably frustrating.

The Asphalt Jungle - There is a certain subsection of noir that revolves around the big heist, and this subsection has inspired a long history of both great and not-so-great entries, most of them using the same standard elements. This John Huston film from 1950 functions both as a terrific noir and as a terrific heist picture, and one of the earliest standout examples of the latter. Sterling Hayden leads a cast of gruff character actors as a down-on-his luck lowlife who is offered the opportunity to participate in a big heist. Once the heist is completed, however, tensions rise and people are betrayed, and there is a good chance by the end that most of the characters will either be in prison or dead. If that plot sounds a little overly familiar, it's probably because so many subsequent films have essentially used its basics as the template for their own stories. You can see at least a little of its influence in many of the classic crime films of the '50s and beyond, especially Stanley Kubrick's The Killing (which also starred Hayden), Jules Dassin's Rififi and Jean-Pierre Melville's Bob Le Flambeur and later on Le Cercle Rouge.

Huston's film is a little more rough around the edges, but and it perhaps doesn't reach quite the same heights as those aforementioned films, but it manages to have its own distinctive qualities to separate it positively from the others. In a film mostly dominated by men working with and then backstabbing other men, enough time is made for two women to make an impression. It took me awhile to place where I'd previously seen Jean Hagen, until I realized she was the helium-voiced Lina Lamont in Singin' In The Rain. Her role here is very different from that Oscar-nominated performance. There's also an early role for Marilyn Monroe, who despite being in only a couple of scenes already lights up the screen in that way that only she could really do. Because the general outlines of these kinds of films are usually so similar, the little details start to stand out as more essential, and The Asphalt Jungle has more than enough of those little details to stand on its own. 8/10

I like 'The Asphalt Jungle' a great deal, too, and agree that it provides the blueprint for most subsequent heist movies, but I'm not so sure that 'The Killing' follows the formula. Perhaps I need to see it again, but the presentation of the heist itself in the perspectives of the different characters involved seemed to lift it above formula.

Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter (2012)With a title this ludicrous, I was expecting ‘Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter’ to be a cheesy exploitation movie, which would be watchable in a so-bad-it’s-good way and, if I was lucky, might make clever use of vampirism as a metaphor for slavery. Perhaps unfortunately, the title is the only funny thing about this movie, which plays its preposterous premise remarkably straight: This is simply a movie about a 19th century vampire hunter who happened to become president of the U.S.A. As such, it is a mediocre effort with a few gaping plot holes and even fewer nice touches. Overall, I rate it below average. 4/10

Tue Apr 02, 2013 6:09 am

Blonde Almond

Cinematographer

Joined: Sun Oct 07, 2012 2:41 pmPosts: 504Location: The Desert

Re: Last Movie You Watched

Unke wrote:

I like 'The Asphalt Jungle' a great deal, too, and agree that it provides the blueprint for most subsequent heist movies, but I'm not so sure that 'The Killing' follows the formula. Perhaps I need to see it again, but the presentation of the heist itself in the perspectives of the different characters involved seemed to lift it above formula.

I was thinking more of just the general elements: the set up, the big heist, the inevitable betrayals. But I agree that the way The Killing is presented elevates it above the formula, especially with its non-chronological structure. It's one of my favorites.

_________________"The only true currency in this bankrupt world is what you share with someone else when you're uncool."Letterboxd Profile

Tue Apr 02, 2013 1:02 pm

JamesKunz

Critic

Joined: Wed Jul 29, 2009 9:35 amPosts: 6010Location: Easton, MD

Re: Last Movie You Watched

Blonde Almond wrote:

Unke wrote:

I like 'The Asphalt Jungle' a great deal, too, and agree that it provides the blueprint for most subsequent heist movies, but I'm not so sure that 'The Killing' follows the formula. Perhaps I need to see it again, but the presentation of the heist itself in the perspectives of the different characters involved seemed to lift it above formula.

I was thinking more of just the general elements: the set up, the big heist, the inevitable betrayals. But I agree that the way The Killing is presented elevates it above the formula, especially with its non-chronological structure. It's one of my favorites.

Do you prefer Rififi or The Asphalt Jungle?

_________________I'm lithe and fierce as a tiger

Tue Apr 02, 2013 1:12 pm

Blonde Almond

Cinematographer

Joined: Sun Oct 07, 2012 2:41 pmPosts: 504Location: The Desert

Re: Last Movie You Watched

JamesKunz wrote:

Blonde Almond wrote:

Unke wrote:

I like 'The Asphalt Jungle' a great deal, too, and agree that it provides the blueprint for most subsequent heist movies, but I'm not so sure that 'The Killing' follows the formula. Perhaps I need to see it again, but the presentation of the heist itself in the perspectives of the different characters involved seemed to lift it above formula.

I was thinking more of just the general elements: the set up, the big heist, the inevitable betrayals. But I agree that the way The Killing is presented elevates it above the formula, especially with its non-chronological structure. It's one of my favorites.

Do you prefer Rififi or The Asphalt Jungle?

I'd say Rififi has the slight edge, if only for the incredible heist sequence. That film and Night and the City are Dassin at his very best.

_________________"The only true currency in this bankrupt world is what you share with someone else when you're uncool."Letterboxd Profile

Tue Apr 02, 2013 1:55 pm

Awf Hand

Second Unit Director

Joined: Tue Oct 09, 2012 10:26 amPosts: 260

Re: Last Movie You Watched

This is 40 (2012) The wife had seen it in theaters and wanted so badly for me to see it that we watched it last night. She was convinced I'd like it and relate to it because, you know, I'm over 40 and enjoy bicycling... I don't recall any laugh out loud moments, and found this movie to be a sad commentary on a segment of society for which I feel little affection, the twenty-something, superficial screw-ups who've doubled their age and their spending habits while losing anything resembling common sense. Now its funny to drop f-bombs in front of your 8 and 13 year olds. There're a fair number of quotes I could lift directly from Berardinelli's review of Confessions of a Shopaholic and am fairly stunned he rated as high as he did.1/4

-One star as I was glad to see John Lithgow on the screen again. Sorry it was in this wreck.

_______________________________________________My milkshake bringeth all thee gentlefolk to mine yard. Verily, 'tis better than thine. I would instruct thee, but I must levy a fee.

Tue Apr 02, 2013 2:50 pm

MunichMan

Assistant Second Unit Director

Joined: Fri Oct 12, 2012 6:34 amPosts: 166

Re: Last Movie You Watched

NotHughGrant wrote:

Sexual Chocolate wrote:

Glengarry Glen Ross

The plot? Minimal. What this is is a fine showcase for some of the best acting talent on the American screen. Alec Baldwin absolutely owns the brief screen time he gets, while Al Pacino and Jack Lemmon trade barbs like the masters of the craft that they are. Kevin Spacey and Alan Arkin's performances are a bit more understated, but equally great. And Ed Harris burns with anger; he's practically explosive. An amazing film all around with great writing by David Mamet. Glengarry was not a box office smash at first, but this film gradually found its well-deserved audience.

I thought Jack Lemmon was amazing in that film. I've barely seen anyone who makes he physically cringe like he.

He's so much of a loser it's actually painful.

IMHO, Jack Lemmon's greatest performance. Such a great film, with stellar performances all around, but The Machine takes the cake. I think my favorite scene is when Shelly goes to the house of the young couple, knowing that he is not going to make the sale, and they know that they are not going to buy, but he still goes through the motions...

The plot? Minimal. What this is is a fine showcase for some of the best acting talent on the American screen. Alec Baldwin absolutely owns the brief screen time he gets, while Al Pacino and Jack Lemmon trade barbs like the masters of the craft that they are. Kevin Spacey and Alan Arkin's performances are a bit more understated, but equally great. And Ed Harris burns with anger; he's practically explosive. An amazing film all around with great writing by David Mamet. Glengarry was not a box office smash at first, but this film gradually found its well-deserved audience.

I thought Jack Lemmon was amazing in that film. I've barely seen anyone who makes he physically cringe like he.

He's so much of a loser it's actually painful.

IMHO, Jack Lemmon's greatest performance. Such a great film, with stellar performances all around, but The Machine takes the cake. I think my favorite scene is when Shelly goes to the house of the young couple, knowing that he is not going to make the sale, and they know that they are not going to buy, but he still goes through the motions...

Yeah good call. I think that scene defines Lemmon's character as someone who is not only vested with lying to other people, but also lying to himself.

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